03/02/2020 Reachlocal UK Ltd & Anor v Bennett & Ors [2014] EWHC 3405 (QB) (21 October 2014) campaign has been directed particularly at the customers of the first claimant, whose names and addresses and contact details have been obtained from a customer list removed from the first claimant in breach of confidence and passed to the defendants. It is that aspect of publication which has no doubt led to the special damage which has been suffered. 60. However, this campaign has not been limited to the first claimant's customers. It has also involved the use of press releases and the fifth defendant's own website. A further factor in the damage to reputation on which the claimants rely is the dissemination of the material complained of by the use of social media sites. This is not pleaded in the Particulars of Claim, no doubt because it has developed over the months since the pleading was served, but it is clearly set out in the evidence, and I see no reason why I should not take account of it. It is notorious that it is very difficult to take defamatory internet campaigns completely out of the public arena, which was a point which Tugendhat J picked up in Clarke v Bain [2008] EWHC 2636 (QB) at [55], referring to a Guardian article which described material which reaches the internet as being as ineradicable as a tattoo. Such campaigns can easily go viral: that also is a legitimate factor to take into account in assessing damages (see Cairns v Modi [2013] 1 WLR 1015 at [27]). 61. It is Mr Bray's evidence that the fifth defendant has published a series of tweets on its Twitter page, to the effect that ReachLocal is engaged in dishonest and deceptive practices and is scamming its customers. The audience for these tweets will include all the followers of the fifth defendant's Twitter page, which amounts to 3,780 Twitter users. It seems unlikely, perhaps, that many people would follow the Twitter page of the fifth defendant unless they were professionally engaged in, or interested in, digital marketing. According to Mr Bray, the fifth defendant has also sent tweets about the claimants to other Twitter accounts, including two controlled by ReachLocal (@ReachLocalUK and @ReachLocal), which have some 7,300 followers. One account to which the fifth defendant has sent its tweets is that of one Ian Puddick, who has 90,000 followers. It also 'retweets' and 'favourites' material published on its own Twitter page. Similarly, according to Mr Bray, it has attracted attention to material on its Twitter page by the use of hashtags, and in particular #SearchWars, which is a topic with a very large readership concerned with broader issues of competition between search engines. The use of that hashtag will bring more readers to the fifth defendant's website. Similarly, the fifth defendant has used its Facebook page and its LinkedIn page to publish material identical or similar to that complained of. 62. The gravity of the allegations is of course a matter of the greatest importance in the assessment of general damages. They are without doubt very serious allegations of grave dishonesty which strike at the heart of the first claimant's business credibility. I take into account also the cynical and hypocritical claim that the allegations were being made out of a sense of high ethical purpose, whereas in reality they were plainly designed simply to enable the defendants to steal the claimants' customers. In my judgment the use of that tactic is likely to have made the allegations the more persuasive and convincing. 63. It is relevant also to note that the first claimant is not a long-established business. It was only incorporated in the UK in 2008, and it operates in a very new field. To borrow the words of Andrew Smith J in Jon Richard Ltd v Gornall [2013] EWHC 1357 (QB), "It is not a business that has yet had the opportunity to build up for generations an established standing associated with integrity from which those with whom it is dealing would immediately recognise that any wrongdoing was entirely uncharacteristic of it. In that sense, it was vulnerable, perhaps, to this sort of attack." 64. Ultimately, I have to approach the question of damages in the same way as a jury would, giving a verdict without a reasoned judgment. Doing the best I can, and taking into account all the matters to which I have referred, it seems to me that the right award of general damages in the case of the first claimant is one of £75,000. In the case of the second claimant, which has never traded in this country, I make a nominal award of £100. I stress that the reason for that discrepancy is simply that the words complained of will primarily have damaged the trading reputation of the ReachLocal company which trades in this jurisdiction, namely the first claimant. 65. As I have said, I am asked to assess damages only in relation to the defamation claim. I therefore say nothing of the claim in malicious falsehood, which essentially duplicates the case in defamation. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2014/3405.html 13/14